On Sock-Puppets: Stuart Neville Speaks

As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, the mood tends to be mostly upbeat and positive over here at CAP Towers. That’s fair enough, I think, given that most crime / mystery writers tend to be mostly upbeat and positive about one another.
  Recently, though, we’ve been seeing a nasty element emerge from the so-called ‘sock-puppet’ scandals. ‘Sock-puppetry’, for those of you unaware, takes place when someone invents an online persona and uses that persona to write five-star reviews of their own work for Amazon, for example.
  In itself, and while unethical and possibly illegal, that practice seems to me to be more pitiable than anything else. And if that was as bad as ‘sock-puppetry’ got, then I could easily live with it.
  Unfortunately, power corrupts, etc. Ever since Stephen Leather announced at Harrogate that he used ‘sock-puppet’ accounts to create a word-of-mouth buzz around his books, it has become - via the good works of Jeremy Duns and Steve Mosby, for the most part - more and more apparent that ‘sock-puppetry’ can also involve a writer penning negative and malicious reviews of their peers.
  This behaviour is utterly disgraceful, and it needs to be stamped out immediately.
  Yesterday, Stuart Neville (above) blogged about his own experience of being targeted by a ‘sock-puppet’. To wit:

The issue of author ethics has been occupying many minds recently, not least of all mine. After ‘Leathergate’, the revelations about John Locke’s buying of reviews, and the most recent allegations against RJ Ellory, I’ve been agonising over my own position in this. As I’ve detailed before, I have been attacked by another author using ‘sock puppet’ accounts on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. I’ve had a good idea all along who was behind it, but until now I’ve preferred to keep that information to myself. But given all that’s happened in just a few weeks, I feel keeping quiet is no longer an option. So here goes:
  I believe the author who has targeted me, along with Declan Hughes, Laura Wilson, and others, is Belfast crime writer Sam Millar. It’s possible I’m mistaken, but I feel the evidence is overwhelming.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  On a personal note, I first heard this story about two years ago, and blogged about it then, albeit without naming names, this on the basis that the story was Stuart’s and it was his to tell. Since then, Sam Millar has not featured on these pages.
  Ironically, I got a call from my publisher on Friday, to let me know that Sam Millar had requested a copy of SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, which he intended to review for The New York Journal of Books.
  I have asked my publisher to politely decline Sam Millar’s request, but of course Sam Millar is entitled to review the book if he chooses. Whether the NYJB will now carry Sam Millar’s reviews is another matter entirely.

Who Is This Man Joseph Hone?

It’s fair to say that the world - niche as it is - of Irish crime writing never fails to surprise me. Late last week, it came to my attention that Lilliput Press has just published a novel called GOODBYE AGAIN by Joseph Hone, with the blurb suggesting that the novel might - just might, mind, given Lilliput’s predilection for publishing literary fiction - be considered a crime thriller. To wit:

Ben Contini, a disenchanted painter of considerable talent, has just buried his mother. Rifling through the attic of her Kilkenny house he stumbles across a Modigliani nude, worth millions. Determined to learn the provenance of the painting, he and Elsa, a disturbed and secretive woman who accosts him at the funeral, become embroiled in the sinister world of Nazi art theft. But they are not the only one with an interest in the painting ... Together they set off on a frantic journey that leads them from Dublin to France via the Cotswolds, down the Canal du Midi into Italy. The intrigue surrounding the shadowy half-truths about their exotic families becomes increasingly sinister as Ben and Elsa are forced to confront their pasts and their buried demons. Set in the 1980s, this is a fantastic new book from established thriller writer Joseph Hone, who weaves a breathless, galloping intrigue packed with narrative twists and sumptuous evocations of Europe’s forgotten past.

 ‘Established thriller writer’? Surely not, thought I, being so well-versed (koff) in all things Irish crime fiction. But lo! A little investigation - very little, to be perfectly frank - unearthed the following on Wikipedia:

Joseph Hone (born February 25, 1937) is a writer of the Spy Novel. His most famous novels featured a British spy called Peter Marlow. The first of the series was THE PRIVATE SECTOR (1971), set in the Six Day War. Marlow’s story continues in THE SIXTH DIRECTORATE (1975), THE FLOWERS OF THE FOREST (a.k.a. THE OXFORD GAMBIT) (1980), and THE VALLEY OF THE FOX (1982). Today, Hone’s novels are out of print. During his heyday, in the 1970s, however, he was favourably compared with writers such as Len Deighton, Eric Ambler and John le Carré.

  Impressive enough, but over at the Faber Finds blog, Jeremy Duns waxes rather more than lyrical about one Joseph Hone. Quote:

“A third of the way through THE PRIVATE SECTOR I thought I was reading a beautiful marriage of Orwell’s BURMESE DAYS (in its evocation of profound British colonial torpor) and John Fante’s ASK THE DUST (in its rendering of a hopeless, near-rebarbative love affair). But that is before the spy game truly gets underway, and Hone shifts gears to show his expertise in that department too.”

  Crikey. Elsewhere, Duns quotes a Washington Post review of THE PRIVATE SECTOR:

“There are moments in this book – indeed, whole chapters – where one is haunted by the eerie feeling that Joseph Hone is really Graham Greene, with faint quarterings of Lawrence Durrell and Thomas Pynchon. His tone is nearly perfect – quiet, morbidly ironic, beautifully controlled and sustained, moodily introspective, occasionally humorous and more often bitter, with a persistent undertone of unspeakable sadness and irrecoverable loss.”

  So that’s me and my ignorance well and truly told. Sounds like Joseph Hone might be one of the great lost Irish thriller writers, and that GOODBYE AGAIN is well worth a whirl. I’ll keep you posted …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Jeremy Duns

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
ENDLESS NIGHT by Agatha Christie. It’s a late novel of hers, and oddly reminiscent of the Angry Young Men novels. It’s beautifully crafted, haunting, with a killer ending.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
James Bond - he lives well, saves the world, and survives.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Dennis Wheatley’s Gregory Sallust spy thrillers.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Coming up with the title for my first novel: FREE AGENT. I wanted something that was very simple, in the vein of Geoffrey Household’s ROGUE MALE, but that would also reveal another layer once you’d finished the book. I just felt a great burden had been lifted and it acted as a kind of mini-tone poem guiding the rest of the book.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Not exactly a crime novel, although it features plenty of crimes, Joseph Hone’s THE SIXTH DIRECTORATE, part of the superb Peter Marlow spy series, sadly long out of print. Gripping plot, beautiful prose.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE BIG O, of course!

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing is the mental strain of putting it all together. The best thing is being paid to do what you love.

The pitch for your next book is …?
1969: a British spy on the run in Biafra has to confront his past.

Who are you reading right now?
George Blake’s memoirs, NO OTHER CHOICE.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Spare, gripping, sweat-inducing.

Jeremy Duns’s FREE AGENT will be published in May 2009 by Simon & Schuster.